Elven Sails appears to have a Conquest cost (5)...is this subtracted from the XP of all heroes?

Yes it is taken from all of them.

Thanks! that answers that.

Kartigan said:

Is there an official word that this is so?

I've been examining it and if it is purely based on Tamalir upgrades being paid for by the entire party then the community appear to have got it wrong. There is considerably more evidence that only the purchasing hero should pay the cost.

SoB pg31
A hero who visits a Shipyard while his party is training in a city may purchase one Ship Upgrade or cannon

RtL pg21
...If the heroes end a given week’s party action in Tamalir, ....
To upgrade Tamalir, the party chooses one of the remaining (i.e., not yet purchased) Tamalir Upgrade cards. Then, each hero pays the listed cost, in full.

RtL pg 4
Party Upgrade cards are added to the city shop deck when playing the Advanced Campaign.

Tamalir Upgrades vs Ship upgrades
Similarities
1. Both include a cost in XP
Differences
1. Tamalir upgrades have explicit wording that the entire party must pay the cost, Ship upgrades do not
2. Tamalir upgrades are conducted by the party collectively (depend on the party game week action result), Ship upgrades are conducted by an individual hero (depend on an individually chosen hero Train action.)
3. Tamalir upgrades do not 'use up' any action, Ship upgrades 'use up' a hero Train action at the shipyard (the hero can do nothing else except upgrade/repair the ship)

Clearly upgrading Tamalir is something the party does collectively, not an individual. Equally clearly the cost is paid for by all party members, but this is explicit and a clear difference from all other purchases or upgrades.
Clearly upgrading the Revenge is something that an individual does. How the cost should be paid is not at all clear but in the absence of any explicit (or even implicit) rule, we must surely assume it is paid the same way as every other purchase or upgrade - individually (albeit through party treasury for the cash, just like other individual purchases). There just isn't enough similarity, and enough clear differences, to assume it should be the same as Tamalir upgrades in RtL.

Corbon said:

Wow....+1 to this argument. I just went and looked at everything and I can't find anything to disagree with you. I guess I owe three of my heroes some XP back since we all operated under the assumption that it was a collective thing but it certainly doesn't seem that way based on the rules.

Hmmm, I suppose you could be right, although this smacks heavily of the "knocking back LTs off of the map" discussion that we had a while back. Seems there it was decided that the slightly ambiguous wording was simply a mistake I don't know why this wouldn't be just a misprint either. Still though I suppose it might be different, if it was I don't know why they didn't highlight it more.

Kartigan said:

No offense intended here, but those two discussions are light years apart.

This one at least as some concrete wording and mechanics behind it. As for why it wasn't highlighted more, the only thing I can offer is that it fits exactly with FFG's policy of not thinking about other expansions when making on. As far as the writers of the rules for SoB are concerned, RtL doesn't exist.

Big Remy said:

No offense taken, and I don't mean any here to you either.

I don't think this has any more concrete wording or mechanics than any other argument you could pull up that didn't have the wording being the exact same as RtL rulebook. I also disagree that as far as the writers of SoB were concerned RtL didn't exist since the page talking about game setup explicitly states that unlike Road to Legend the overlord doesn't start with a LT (I can't quote the exact phrase or page number since I don't have the manual with me atm, and the pdf isn't working on this computer ). It's an incredibly explict mention of Road to Legend and how the Sea of Blood rules are different.

I'm not saying that every rule change has to be highlighted like that in order to be official, but they usually are a little more explicit than a few words being left out. I can see if you decide to play that way, but I think that's a bit of a stretch and would choose not to unless it was FAQed. No offense meant though, I just disagree with the perspective you're coming from.

Well I see you read that book and twist every rule as you please. Let me ask you then if you buy a cannon with only one heroe exp., than can the other players fire that cannon? , cause the skills , wounds etc. they bought for themselvs are not share in the party.

Slapul said:

The tone of your post comes across as very angry. You might want to tone it down.

Now, I'm not the most world traveled game player. Still, in my limited experience rules-lawyering is fairly common in board games, and especially in Descent. The rules are so loosely written that you really can interpret them in many valid ways. The majority of board game makers spell the rules out very carefully and explicitly just to avoid this as best as one can.

FFG's editing staff seems to be either overworked or just at a loss as to why the wording is so important to us. Either way unintended loopholes and interpretations like this one seem to be fairly common around here.

Personally the people I play with could really care less what the rules explicitly say and how you could interpret them for powerful exploits. We are more concerned with the designers intent and what seems best for balance and fun. I thank my lucky stars for that.

Kartigan said:

My point was really that there is no foundation to the assumption that all heroes must pay the cost for ship upgrades. Ship upgrades are just too different from Tamalir upgrades to make parallel assumptions.
Interesting that you call it a rule change - a rule change from what I ask you? and how did you come up with the rule that is being changed?

I'm not suggesting that the payment should be individual just because it doesn't explicitly say that it is collective, I'm suggesting that the payment should be individual because there is very little (almost no) similarity with the only case of a collective payment.
If there were more similarities, then yes, in the absence of any actual direction I would guess we should follow the RtL Tamalir upgrades. But when looking at the evidence, Ship upgrades are very, very different beasts to Tamalir upgrades so why would they use the same system and not say so?

Slapul said:

Of course they can. A cannon, though an upgrade, is an upgrade for the vessel. Once on the vessel it is just a piece of equipment at a station that anyone can man and use.

And if you really think that the rest of the party don't benefit from additional skills traits and secret master upgrades purchased by an individual hero then... I give up.

You're interpreting my words, i never said the others don't benefits from one hero skill, what i'm saying is that he is the only one who's using the skill.

The revenge is for the entire party so the upgrades should be the same. The rules does not explicity says that every hero should pay for the upgrade, for us is obvious that everybody pay, if u want to make a house rules otherwise nobody stops you.

Slapul said:

True, you didn't say that exactly, sorry. Nonetheless, the point you were making was, and still is, simply wrong. Stuff you buy for yourself can, sometimes, be shared by the rest of the party.

Battle Cry. Defender. Captain. Lightfinger. Pico. Ran's Mark. Boggs. Mata and Kata. Blessing. Alex the Wise. Skye.
All of these skills and abilities can be either used by or directly applied to other heroes, even though only one hero has them and only one hero pays to get them. Especially the familiars and animal companions.
Further, hero A can buy treasures from the shop, even using Appraiser to draw and purchase extra treasures that no other hero could have bought, and then simply give them away to Hero B who uses them even though Hero A paid all the cost.

Paying the cost and getting the use are clearly not exclusively connected.

Slapul said:

What makes it obvious? Because everybody gets to use it? Or everybody gets to 'own' it? That's garbage. Everybody gets to use Familiars and animal companions too, but you don't make everyone pay to 'train' those skills.

The fact (rule) is that one hero has to take the action to upgrade the Revenge. Everyone else can go and do other things and not be upgrading the Revenge. If part of the cost (the action) is only paid for by one hero what on earth suggests that other parts of the cost are paid by all heroes? The answer, based on rules, is nothing whatsoever suggests that.
Therefore, the 'houserule' is that everyone pays because the Rules don't even remotely suggest that everyone pays and explicitly have only one hero paying the action part of the cost.

You are of course free to play a houserule that everyone pays if you wish.

But when people ask what the rules say (and some of us prefer to play with as few houserules as possible) then answering with a houserule without describing it as such* is, frankly, dishonest.

*Note, no one has done this to my knowledge in this thread. It had seemed to be consensus agreement that the whole party paid, but merely because the question hadn't been looked at closely for a rules basis before, but roughly copied from RtL.

Kartigan said:

Think of it this way. Forget that you ever seen, read or played RtL.

Now read these rules for the shipyard again. The way it is written would it ever occur to you that everyone is supposed to pay the costs or does it read as just the hero going there has to pay?

Train
A hero who visits a Shipyard while his party is training in a city may purchase one Ship Upgrade or cannon. In addition, the Revenge may be repaired at a rate of 100 coins per 10 wounds (or fraction thereof). It is possible to repair any number of wounds in a single week, up to the Revenge’s maximum. The
Revenge may be both upgraded and repaired during the same week. Each city’s Shipyard offers all of the Ship Upgrades and cannons. Every city’s shipyard may repair.

First, as written right there, its a hero as Corbon I think pointed out. Second, its an action being taken at a building in a city, any city, so right there is fundamentally different than the Tamalir upgrades. Third, it takes a Train action to buy upgrades. In contrast, Tamalir upgrades had no designated building, and could be done whenever you end a game week in Tamalir.

Honestly, if you had never seen the rules for RtL and the way Tamalir upgrades work I don't see how you could possibly read it as anything other than one hero pays the costs.

Ok I read the rules again and nowhere in the book suggest that you have to pay from all the heroes for anything in SOB, you are right there.

I never played RTL anyway and didn't know the rules stated there. But considering of the low cost of exp for those ship upgrade we supposed that the exp is substracted from every hero. I'll ask friends what they think, but probably they will agree with you since they all are heroes.

In conclusion, we'll have to play by the rules , exp from one hero only, but i don't think that is meant this way, so till further notice from the designers i guess this is it.

By RAW, only one hero buys the ship upgrade. I have a feeling though that will be errata'ed to every hero, similar to the Tamalir upgrades. Just a feeling...

-shnar

shnar said:

More than likely.

Finaly someone agrees with me

Nah, it's the same as for RtL : the hero that buys the upgrade buys it for the ship - the ship belongs to the party. He doesn't buy the upgrade for himself nor equip it on himself. The party has to pay the upgrade from each hero, since it's a party upgrade.

shnar said:

Aye, I'd have to agree with that. As Big Remy said there's no evidence whatsoever if you haven't ever played RtL that ship upgrades cost every hero the XP. I would agree that as per RAW only 1 hero pays for the upgrade. But I also agree with what Proto Persona said in his post about trying to play with the designers intent rather than explicit rules lawyering. And because I do know RtL exists and I do know that SoB is basically RtL version 1.1, then I believe that this will be errated to play as per the Road to Legend rules regarding Tamalir upgrades. If the FAQ comes out and it doesn't change this, my group will probably switch to only one hero paying the upgrade costs.

Still, as you say until it is changed (or if it is changed), playing that every hero pays the XP cost would be a house rule.

kornel said:

Fine. Go find it in the rules for SoB, quote it with a page number, bold the words that say the party pays the cost and post it here. Until you can do that, you are incorrect. It doesn't matter what we think the designers intended, if the RAW doesn't say that then its not correct.

@Kartigan: That's fine, but how do you know that is the designer's intent? Its a guess. I can easily think they intended it this way, since making everyone pay for the upgrade is a drain on the party resources. Some heroes require less training than others to be good, perhaps this was meant as a way to reign in some of the stronger heroes by subtly forcing the party to have them be the ones buying ship upgrades.

The intent game rarely ever works in Descent in all the time I've been playing it.

One other thing: People are forgetting the flip side to one hero paying for the Upgrade and the way the Shipyard works.

Multiple heroes can go and buy multiple upgrades during a given game week Train action.

Tamalir upgrades are one upgrade per week.

Shipyards are one upgrade or one cannon per game week per hero.

That is a fundamental difference, otherwise it would take 3 game weeks of Training actions to outfit the Revenge with a full complement of cannons. That to me right there says this is an intended difference.

kornel said:

Go read the rules.

First, its not a party upgrade, its a ship upgrade. There are no party upgrades in SoB.

Second, even party upgrades in RtL are paid for individually (they are cash costs only and bought at the market). Only Tamalir upgrades are paid for by the group and they are not party upgrades.

I have to agree that it is entirely possible that the rules may be FAQed so that evreybody pays the CT cost portion - not because it makes sense but because FFG have a history of perverse rulings.

However those who claim intent are simply laying their own wishes onto the designers. There is no evidence to support them and it is neither obvious nor even likely that the 'intent' was for each hero to pay.

shnar said:

Looks like my feeling was in the right direction. The latest FAQ has clarified this ruling:

"Q: Ship Upgrades and the Shipyard: For ship upgrades
such as Elven Sails that have a experience cost, is this
experience cost paid by the entire party (similar to the
Tamalir upgrades in Road to Legend) or does only the
hero who purchased the upgrade pay the experience cost?
A: Upgrades are paid for by the party."

The RAW it's rather clear that only one hero pays for the upgrade, but apparently that was not Kevin's intent and the writer just botched it good so the whole party has to pay...

-shnar